


Everything In A Name

by orphan_account



Series: Time Bombs: A Tutorial [1]
Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Blasphemy, F/F, F/M, Fusion, Heaven is asgard, Identity Porn, M/M, Might have racebent michael and lucifer, Ok so i racebent most of heaven, POV Character of Color, So sue me, basically spn peeps are avengers, cos of all the white, for no good reason, i am a bad christian, i apologise for any feels caused by reading this work, jk no i dont suck it up bitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:43:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1593698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean builds metal suits and pretends everything's fine, Sam's anger issues have gotten beyond a joke, Ruby's trying to get the red out of her ledger, Jo shoots sharp and mourns her mother, Michael wants to make a paradise and Cas is very far away from home. </p><p> </p><p>Please R&R, I get sad if I think no-one loves me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dr Sam Wesson

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a quote by George Ade. If anybody cares.

He'd had lots of names, lots of identities, over his life.

There was Sammy, who moved from town to town, kept his head down in school and cringed from his mother Lilith's stinging slaps. Sam, who came to Stanford out of nowhere, and earned himself degree after degree in science after science, because the value attached to the pieces of paper and the prefix on his name made him feel like he could breathe. Then Dr. Wesson, who needed a specially large lab coat and a lab assistant that could keep up with his turbo-charged brain. Sometimes he was Moose, after Dr Tran _(Kevin, always Kevin,_ God _but he missed him)_ got comfortable enough with him. That may be his favourite name- shouted at him across the lab, teasing him over a hurried lunch, murmured in his ear as they fell asleep wrapped around each other. He should have known that wouldn't last. Just his bad luck, to fall in love with a guy who's guardian was  _General fucking Crowley ,_ what even is his life?

Still it was good while it lasted. Hell, it was _brilliant_. A home, a boyfriend who meant the world to him, work that made his mind spin with possibilities. Respected, admired, trusted. Loved.

And then, lo, everything went to shit.

After  _that,_ he'd been called so many different things, names falling from his pocket like loose change- only he keeps the loose change now, cause you never know when you might need a couple extra bucks. He'd shorn off the Rapunzel hair Kevin had always loved, hunched his shoulders and done his damnedest not to draw any attention.

Well, that plan had gone straight to hell.

And no, he doesn't count the Other Guy as one of his identities. No way is that monster a part of him, whatever the fuck Kevin says. He will deny it till the day he dies. 

Now, it seems, he's Dr Wesson again; to the paperwork, to the legions of twitchy suits that look at him like he needs to be diffused, possibly with some sort of bullet. To the agent who'd come to collect him, who'd found him nursing the sick and dug him out of Calcutta and into some clean clothes. The agent who'd looked at  _him,_ not the monster. The one who hadn't been afraid.

He thinks he'd like her, if she stopped lying to him.


	2. Casimir Novak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cas is polish in this fic, for naming purposes. I am not Polish, so if I've done anything wrong, please point it out and I will fix it.  
> Just to add, Cas and I both recognise the massive difference between xenophobia and racism. If I'm being disrespectful, again please tell me and I'll sort it out.  
> Sorry for the long ass note, now for the feels.....

Captain America has a smile that charms ladies out of their seats and muscles that could rip apart a tank. Captain America rides in on a motorbike like a knight's charger and saves the day. Captain America is never sad, even a little, and certainly never sad enough for the psychiatrists to get worried. Captain America is alone, maybe, but never lonely.

Cas Novak hardly smiles these days, and while he might be able to rip apart a tank if he puts his mind to it, his muscles are nowhere near as big as on the posters. Cas Novak lost the motorbike a very long time ago, and has nobody left to save. Cas Novak has psychiatrist watching his every move through bugs he isn't supposed to notice. He could disable them, but that would give a lot of people with a lot more power than him an excuse to remove all his carefully won autonomy, and he doesn't want that.

Cas Novak is so alone that his heart is quietly, busily ripping itself apart in his chest.

Cas Novak is on paper as Charles Shirley, because his father, newly christened Charles Shirley Snr. told his mother, newly christened Rebecca, that they were living in America now, and his son should have an American name. Becky wanted to name her child Cazimierz, after his grandfather. Chuck Shirley put his foot down and told her they weren't in Poland anymore, and that nobody was going to get a job with a name like that.

Becky had agreed, and watched the name printed on the birth certificate, and whispered _cah_ - _zim_ - _yesh_ into his ear every night.

Cas Novak grew up answering to two names. He listened to his father's occasional rants about blending in and how lucky they were that they could pass as Americans like this. He also listened to his mother's Polish folk tales and history lessons, and changed Charles Shirley to Casimir Novak as soon as he could, but only because nobody seemed to be able to pronounce Cazimierz.

History, however, remembers only Cpt America and Charles Shirley. The legendary hero and the all-American super-soldier. There are books and films and cosplayers, whatever they are, on the apparently endlessly fascinating subject of both of them.

Nobody ever wrote a book about Cas Novak.

He sighs, and sketches a skyline that doesn't exist anymore, and simply keeps on going.

Balthazar and Meg, his blood brother and his beautiful demon woman, are long, long gone.


	3. Dean Winchester

They used to call him the Merchant of Death. That name, at least, had fitted. He could joke about that one, callous not-funny jokes that made Lisa sigh.

Now they call him Iron Man. He's not sure he likes that name so much. He sure as hell doesn't feel like iron. Dean's ok, but if he could, if the goddamn press and the goddamn company and the whole goddamn world would let him, he'd chop off his surname and drive it straight off a cliff.

MISSOURI tells him that's physically impossible. He laughs, ugly, and takes another drink.

Lisa knows about the drinking, like she knows why MISSOURI has an accent straight from the South, and why he's always late to meetings and hates being handed things and insists on taking the first slice. She brings it up when she thinks it's getting out of hand, cause no-one wants a billionaire genius alcoholic. John was bad enough.

She, MISSOURI and Victor probably have conferences. Winchester Friends Anonymous.

The press lap it up; every development, every nosedive, every one night stand and skipped meeting. Every time they can say that Afghanistan left him scarred, rolling out the words like a fucking red carpet. Like an immortal soul contract. Sign here for ten years and an immediate get-out clause. Sign here for a fucking ticket to fucking Loonyville.

Afghanistan left him scarred, all right. Afghanistan left him ripped and torn and fucked up six ways to Sunday, as if he needed the help.

No, that's mean. Afghanistan was pretty damn okay, actually. Nice people, on the whole. Lovely views.

Hell left him scarred.

All these Bible-thumpin' conservatives tell the world, Hell is fire and brimstone and screaming sinners. Hell is the Devil and sulphur, hooves and homosexuals and hyperbole.

They don't know shit.

Hell is a cave and a bucket of water which he sees the bottom of far too often. Hell is having your worldview shattered to crunchy dust. Hell is seeing your life's work in the hands of men who's hands are fucking soaked to the elbows in blood. Hell is knowing your life's work was never anything but brand new ways to murder.

Hell is shrapnel in your chest and the best damn human being there ever was dying on a pile of sacking.

He'll swear by anything that he can feel the fucking shrapnel in his chest, sharp against his muscles. No matter how hot he gets, they stay cold as ice. MISSOURI tells him it's psychosomatic. He laughs, ugly, and takes another drink.


	4. Agent Jo Harvelle

Jo's mom had owned an old shotgun, one of her father's. It was ancient, practically an antique, but in prime condition. They hung it on the wall of the Roadhouse and field-stripped it every day, polishing it till it gleamed.

Ellen had said it was the best damn gun she owned. She'd taught Joanna how to shoot with it, and told her it would be hers one day. To little Joanna Harvelle, that was the greatest thing in the whole wide world.

Course, it didn't work out. The gun burned to so much ash and molten metal, along with her home and her family and every last damn thing that made her Joanna Harvelle. She'd been fifteen.

Guns were never really her thing anyway.

The first time they called her Hawkeye was after her first real job. She'd been around seventeen, young and angry and out for vengeance. She hadn't really seen the big deal-far as she's concerned, that shot was easy. But nope. When they'd got back, mission accomplished, the people she'd fallen in with were practically bouncing. She was Supergirl. Everyone wanted her story.

She'd spent the night in the corner, nursing a beer and trying not to think about the guy she'd just killed. Thought instead about the research on the memory stick around her neck, the new puzzle piece the head honcho had hissed in her ear just now. How much closer she was.

It sure as hell beat spreading her legs.

Still, after that, well...Harvelle just didn't really fit anymore. It was still hers, of course it was. Just not for everyday use. It took a few hundred thousand in stolen dollars and a couple of arrows in the right places, but eventually the few traces Joanna Beth Harvelle had left were gone.

She was gone.

In her place was Jo Hunter- criminal, sniper, archer, orphan. Killer.

She'd been seventeen.

She was twenty when SHIELD caught up with her, and she'd worn her bow like an ID badge. _I am Hawkeye, the one who never misses. That's all. Nothing else to see here._

Some days she thought that might be true.

Half of them wanted to lock her up and throw away the key. The other half, though, was lead by a guy who looked like he belonged in primary school. Somehow that meant they won, and Jo Hunter became proper.

She knew they didn't buy the fake surname. But Agent Fitzgerald was weirdly nice enough to let it lie. He'd given her missions and let her choose her spots and give him backtalk, and he'd turned a blind eye to her moonlighting.

Till Carthage. Till she'd fucked the whole thing up and ruined a year of planning for one shot at the guy who'd ordered her mom dead.

Alistair got away.

After that, with brand new super-duper hearing aids and pretty much everyone baying for her blood, Agent Fitzgerald had sat her down, told her to call him Garth, and then spilled everything he knew about her mom's death.

She'd got most of it, but there were a fair few surprises. Enough to make her wonder where Agent Fit-Garth got his info from. When asked, he'd tapped his nose and said something about a special lady.

Whatever. The information was good, and she's like miles closer to the end goal than before.

Garth had had a weird look on his face when she'd thanked him, and she'd realised that she'd never seen him sad. Ever.

"You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

Never, she'd told him, voice strong and cold and absolutely nothing like Jo Harvelle.

He'd winked. "Never say never, amiga."

She'd ignored that bit. Garth was dumb sometimes. She wasn't. Not anymore.

When she got off probation, Garth'd called her, told her they had a mission for her. An assassin known as the Black Widow had been sighted in Budapest, and Jo was gonna go take her out.

As soon as she heard the name, she said yes.

She winds up in a disused ballroom, arrow leveled at the heart of a smirking dark-haired woman. The woman is holding a gun, and it's pointed her way.

"You SHEILD, then?"

"Oh yeah." She fights to keep her heart rate steady. No more dumb mistakes. This woman might look a hell of a lot more normal than she expected, but the end result's gonna be the same.

"Here to take me in?"

"Here to take you down. It's over, Petrovitch."

Something hardens in those lovely dark eyes and yep, there it is. There's the monster. " Sorry honey, I don't think so. You're cute, but I've got things to do, people to kill and I really don't have time for this."

She isn't quite sure how they ended up here, several hours later, in a dusty old attic, with a SHEILD Quinnjet landing on the next roof over. Petrovich is lying curled up on the floor, dark hair over her face, blood seeping through her fingers from around the knife buried in her stomach.

Jo didn't put the knife there, but she knows what she should do with it. Pull it out, increase the blood flow, leave the bitch who killed her mom to die on the dirty wooden floor. It's what she's been waiting to do all her life. It's what Jo Hunter would do, without a thought.

But she isn't Jo Hunter, not really. And maybe it's time she stopped pretending.

Her arm goes around Petrovitch's back and she slings her bow onto her shoulder, stands and scoops her up in a bridal carry. The other woman is impossibly light, and Jo carries her into the Quinnjet with ease.

Afterwards, when Petrovitch is in a SHEILD med bay, Garth has filed a request for her to join the side of good and  Director Singer has cussed them out and agreed, Jo finds the nearest Administrations office and smiles winningly at the poor schmuck working there. When she walks away, on course to the med bay, she moves like it's Christmas.

Behind her, a starstruck desk jockey changes every mention of Jo Hunter in SHEILD files to Jo Harvelle.


	5. Prince Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not black. Michael is. Therefor there is a large potential for fuckups on my part in this. If anyone feels I've screwed up anywhere, please, please tell me and I will change it immediately

Adam is completely incredulous when Michael first tells him of his origins. After some discussion, it becomes clear that the passage of time has altered the memory humanity has of Heaven in ways even the Father of All could not have imagined. Adam tells him, Heaven is a place where good people go when they die. There is such distain in his voice that Michael has to laugh. Adam, it transpires, is something known as an atheist.

Adam's friend Charlie, the woman with hair that reminds him of his sword-sister Anael, grew up among a people known as Christians, and so is able to tell him a little more. The intervention of his people on this planet had not gone unnoticed-far from it. Christians seem to follow an altered version of the laws of his Father. Very altered indeed- he has no idea who this man called Jesus is, although he suspects the man might have had some form of psychic talent, some way to tap into Creation's energies. It is of no import. Michael can sympathise with his message, though. It is very similar to Heaven's own philosophy.

Rufus sighs deeply and tells him that humans are morons, and that the fear on Charlie's face when she first believed his origins is in part due to that. Apparently one of the teachings left behind in one of the man holy books of this people concerns not lying with another man. This is perhaps the commandment Michael finds the strangest- Heaven has no law concerning homosexuality. Indeed, his sword-brother Gadreel is happily wed to Abner, and has been for some centuries.

He thinks he would like to do the same with Adam, if his beloved is willing.

Anyhow, his name is rather common on Eden, spread by mentions in the holy books of Christians and of Rufus's people. They tell him that Michael is the patron saint of warriors, which he finds very appropriate. He was always a warrior, on the battlefield and in private. After all, that is how he came to be here.

Less so is the designation humans have given to Gabriel and Raphael. Gabriel would be terrible at delivering messages, and the thought of his stern sister healing anyone is ludicrous. She would likely tell them it was their own fault.

When he asks of Lucifer, their faces fall, and as Charlie tells the story in a quiet voice, he is abruptly furious. Lucifer is proud, yes; proud and angry and with a sharp intelligence that makes Michael uneasy, but he would _never_. He would _never_ betray his family in such a way.

Family is so very very important in Heaven.

Already he misses them, his brothers, his sister. He misses Gabriel's laughter, Raphael's directness, Lucifer's quiet sarcasm. But....there is nothing to be done. His father will not relent, not now. Maybe not ever.

No, that is unthinkable. However, whilst on Eden, he can at least be useful. Charlie tells him of injustices done to women with flippant tones that cannot hide her fear, her rage. Rufus takes him quietly aside and tells him of colonialism and of slavery, of a justice force that would shoot men who look as he does for simply walking down the street in a hooded top. That is another shock- in Eden, those with pale skins are the royalty, and unlike on his planet, where racial differences among Heaven's people were settled long ago, they do not allow those of other races the right to be equal to them. Eden, it seems, is no paradise.

But Michael is a prince, son of a great and noble king. The thought of anyone seeing the darkness of his skin, the curves of Raphael's hips, the love shared by Gadreel and Abner and thinking them _less_ for it turns his blood to fire.

Eden is no paradise, but it should be.

They call him patron of warriors? Then he will be a warrior. Those on Eden who's government will not hear their voices need someone who will fight for them. It may as well be him.


	6. Agent Ruby Cortez

Ruby isn't her name, not really. She lost the real one along the way, along with her Russian accent and her baby fat and a good-sized portion of her humanity. Still, it's a name, and it fits her pretty well. Hard, cold, difficult to break. Red.

When she tells Jo this, the woman laughs and tells her she's a fucking cliche. Which, yeah, is fair enough.

SHEILD records have her down as Agent Ruby Cortez, because she chose that name on a hospital bed on what was possibly the best day of her life. It's another kind of cover, really, but what the hell. At least she got to pick this one.

And no way in Hell was she going by Petrovitch.

She hadn't heard that name in years, had run from it as far and as fast as possible, had spied and lied and killed under every other name in the fucking baby names book, until a derelict ballroom in Budapest and a hot girl with a bow.That had been it, really.

Everyone's got a point where they realise that they can't keep lying to themselves forever.

Ruby knows. She knows people, she doesn't always get them but she knows how they work, what it takes to make them do....well, anything, really. You've just gotta put your mind to it.

That's where Black Widow comes in. You get in close, you get friendly, then you bite. 

She's damn good at it, too.

Too good.

She was lying when she told herself that freelance was different. Lying when she said it was ok, it was better, this was her making her own choices for once in her life, and the trail of blood would be there anyway, no matter what she did, so she might as well decide to make it.

Jo'd hit the nail on the head there. The woman she'd met in Budapest had been Leanna Petrovitch. Same job, same results, same messy bloody trail behind her.

She's not stupid-she knows SHEILD isn't all sunshine and cute wittle bunnies. She's still spying and lying and killing. There's still red in her ledger.

The first time she'd used that phrase had been the med bay, side stitched up and healing, cute blonde chick curled into the armchair beside her. She looks even younger than she had in the ballroom, and very lost. Like the map she'd been using had burned away under her hands, and then been declared obsolete.

Ruby could relate.

Jo had spoken first. "I'm not sure if I trust you"

"Trusted me enough to save my life."

"Yeah, well, you saved mine right back. You forgotten that bit with the canon already?"

"Well, you know what they say about traumatic events..."

They shared a smile, then something in Jo's face had pulled closed. "Why?"

"Why what?"

" Don't play dumb. Why'd you save me?"

What could she say? She was old, now, old and bloodied and Jo was still so young.

Then again, Jo was Hawkeye, the archer who never missed. Maybe she knew a bit about blood.

"I have red in my ledger."

Silence. She went on. "I've killed on every continent. Most countries. Mums and dads and brothers and sisters. So much fucking red and....." Deep breath. "I want to wipe it out."

She'd said shit like this a thousand times, saying any fucking thing at all to make them trust her, to make them think she was tortured, some sort of tragic princess they could fix up and make into a real girl.

Not now. This was it- the truth.

Leanna Petrovitch trained in a red red room and killed for red red men, because she had to.

Black Widow lied and killed and painted her lips with blood, because she could.

Ruby lied and killed, but at least she killed the right people, and saved good people by doing bad things. And sometimes, occasionally, she told the truth.


End file.
